Food Stuff

Pakistan ranks 5th in the Muslim world and 20th among all in quotient of farm output. And it is also the world’s 5th largest milk producer. Pakistan ranks topmost in production of key food items in the word such as 94th), Chickpeas(2nd), sugarcane(4th), date palm (3rd), mango (6th) wheat(9th), apricot(4th), onion(5th), milk (5th), rice (8th), and oranges (10th).

Pakistan ‘s principle natural resources are arable land and water, agriculture accounts for around 23% of GDP and employees more than 44% of the labor force.The food and its allied product is industry is considered to be Pakistan largest industry and is considered to be accounting for 27% of its value added production, there are 80.000 small businesses and more than 2 million of micro enterprises more than which are food manufacturers

Pakistan had a bumper crop of 6.7 million tons of milled rice in 2009/10 and exported about 4.5 million tons; domestic annual consumption was about 2.3 million tons. According to officials, currently Pakistan has exported 1.2 million tons of wheat out of a total of 3 million tons allowed by the government. If Pakistani exporters successfully export three million tons of wheat at current international prices ie $340 per ton it would earn $1.02 billion. This year Pakistan has achieved its .Kino export target for 2010-11 by exporting about 300,000 metric tons of the commodity. Citrus was grown on an area of about 199.5 thousand hectare with annual production of 2458.5 thousand metric tons

Dubai is the biggest market for Pakistani mango following England and Saudi Arabia. Sri Lanka is the only market for Pakistani fresh apple as over 90 per cent of the fruit is being exported to Sri Lanka. There is a need to explore new markets for Pakistani fruits and vegetables to expand export base. Kino is the most exportable fruit of Pakistan and 32.5 per cent of total exports is being made to the Middle East alone, followed by Indonesia (22.5 per cent), Philippines (16 per cent), Sri Lanka (11.6 per cent) and remaining 17.4 per cent to other markets of the world, but this year a huge quantity of Kino’s was exported to Afghanistan, which raised the price of fruit in the local market.

Government is also taking strong measures to incorporate strong steps to invoke food processing awareness and to promote the basic knowledge to small enterprise land owners to increase food and stuff yield.